Hammy Reviews

Last week, I wrote a list of my Top 10 Best Threequels (click here to view my list!). In the light of equality, it’s only fair to do a list of Top 10 Worst Threequels, isn’t it? The Threequel usually has a tough act to follow, and in many cases leads to disappointment. Case in point: The Dark Knight Rises. It followed The Dark Knight, one of the most critically acclaimed movies in the past ten years. How could the threequel live up to the sequel? Answer: it didn’t. It left me deflated and wondering what I’d just watched. Of course, I’d hyped myself up beyond belief for Batman vs Bane (something I didn’t do for Batman vs The Joker Part 2), therefore it was almost inevitable that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations. However, several rewatches have confirmed my initial belief that The Dark Knight Rises is simply a bore. That and nine others grace my Top 10 Worst Threequels…

10. The Dark Knight Rises

People went bananas for The Dark Knight, the film that consolidated Christopher Nolan’s box office might and brought The Joker for a post 9/11 age. The Dark Knight left us satisfied yet wanting more of Nolan’s Batman universe. Four years later, he’d give us The Dark Knight Rises. Bane was the primary villain here, reimagined as a British man on steroids who you could barely hear. After The Joker, any villain would have a tough time posing a threat to Batman. Here, however, was a man who could overpower Batman easily. And he did, in one of the worst fight sequences ever placed in a blockbuster. This is the film that confirmed in my mind Nolan can’t direct a fight scene. But apart from the fight scene, Nolan gave us a bloated, boring first and second act before rushing everything into place for a ludicrous finale. I understand what he was aiming for, but he fell well short of the mark. A bitter disappointment, one that disappoints me every time I watch it.

9. Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

George Miller, what went wrong? After the balls out insanity of Mad Max: Road Warrior, he splurged out this apparent threequel, which may as well have not been a Mad Max film at all. Sure, it had Mel Gibson as Mad Max in it, and stuck to the backstory of the other two films, but Miller could have easily released this as its own film. Let’s face it, the kids are irritating and take up too much of the movie. Apart from the Thunderdome fight scene, the film is a chore to watch, and Mel Gibson looks confused as to what movie he is in. At least Miller rested the Mad Max franchise until giving us the wonder that is Mad Max: Fury Road.

8. The Godfather Part III

For starters, who wanted this film, so long after Part II had been released? Yes, the first two are great films, but they tell you everything you need to know. They’re also very much a product of their time. Take any movie from the 70s and a person with a keen eye will be able to tell that’s it from the 70s, from the direction to the dialogue. Part III feels like a 70s film dragged kicking and screaming into the late 80s. It looks stale and it feels boring. It really adds nothing to the other two films that people should care about. You may as well just watch Part I and Part II again, rather than be terribly disappointed by the threequel.

7. Scream 3

When does a parody become a parody of itself? When the parody runs out of ideas, which is what happened with Scream 3. Scream and Scream 2 had already deconstructed the horror/slasher movie to within an inch of its life, so there wasn’t much for a threequel to satirize. Instead, they just covered old ground to waste time before revealing the inevitable silly twist. There’s not much more than that, to be honest. Most of the original cast are gone, leaving uninspiring characters in their stead. You’ll want Ghostface to kill himself and end the sorry tale long before the end arrives.

6. Jurassic Park 3

I am not a fan of The Lost World, but at least that had a book behind it. Jurassic Park 3 was an example of a film being written on the fly from ideas left behind from the first two. So we have a scene with Pterodactyls attacking the main characters. We have a dream sequence with a raptor talking to Alan Grant. But if Spielberg failed to merely copy the magic of the first one in The Lost World, then Joe Johnston fails to capture anything worthwhile in the third one. It has the familiar face of Alan Grant, but he may as well be a different character. The other characters are forgettable and barely have any development. Somehow, the special effects are even worse than the original. If The Lost World was a big disappointment, this is just a terrible film.

(Click here for my review)

5. X-Men: Apocalypse

It was a toss-up between this and X-Men III: The Last Stand, but Apocalypse was all the more disappointing because it was directed by Bryan Singer! How could he give us a terrible X-Men movie after giving us the best one? Easy: he has one of the characters tell us that the third part in a trilogy is always the worst! Some fourth wall breaking dialogue there, Singer! Apocalypse trips over itself introducing (and re-introducing) mutants, most of whom serve no purpose in the ongoing storyline. The main villain, Apocalypse, doesn’t appear to know why he wants to destroy the world. For survival of the fittest? Maybe! There’s not much of a plot to speak of, as Apocalypse slowly gathers his Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (get it?) whilst the X-Men slowly decide what to do about the threat. Objectively speaking, X-Men III may be worse than Apocalypse, but Singer should have done better than this poor effort.

(Click here for my review)

4. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Hold on, didn’t the T-800 and friends stop Judgment Day in Terminator 2? So why did we need a threequel? Because Hollywood thought they could squeeze more money out of the franchise. So an aging Arnie took the reigns as the T-800, looking very much out of place. His foe? The T-X, a female robot (diversity, folks!) who can do pretty much everything the T-1000 could…but also make guns out of her hands. It’s bookended by two decent scenes (actually, the ending is pretty awesome, but doesn’t redeem what came before), but Terminator 3 chooses self-parody over pushing the franchise in a new direction. It’s the same old story we’ve seen before, this time with action that wouldn’t thrill anybody and acting that wouldn’t convince at a children’s Christmas play.

3. The Matrix Revolutions
   

The Wachowksi siblings had to do something special after the shambles that was The Matrix Reloaded. However, they tarnished the legacy of The Matrix even further with the final part of the trilogy. Come on, it has Neo waiting at a train station for the first act of the movie! At least Reloaded had a few exciting action scenes (that regrettably went on for too long). Revolutions has more boring conversations in Zion and even less action in the Matrix. It forgets to tie even the more obvious loose end, leaves a bunch of questions on the table and leaves everyone even more confused than they were after Reloaded. All it made me think was “what was the point in all that?” I prefer to believe that The Matrix never had any sequels.

2. Spider-Man 3

Sam Raimi dropped the ball onto a baby’s head with this threequel. After directing the two best Spider-Man films thus far, Raimi forced out this excretion of a movie. He presumably thought the three in the title meant that he had to give us three villains. So, we had Harry Osborne, Sandman and Venom, the latter of which is one of Spider-Man’s greatest enemies yet had the least screen time in this film. Raimi obviously wanted to focus on Sandman, but had to balance him with the other two. Spider-Man 3 places a silly retcon in the plot to justify Sandman’s existence in the franchise. Oh, and who can forget about Peter’s turn to the dark side, which is just Maguire wearing his fringe to the side and dancing? Utterly, utterly awful.

1. Robocop 3

Robocop 2 carried on the ultraviolence of the original but forgot the include Verhoeven’s biting satire and black comedy. Robocop 3 forgot about the ultraviolence as well. It gave us a sanitised version of the Robocop universe, where gunshot wounds never produce blood and Robocop flies. It’s silly and pointless. They should have let Robocop die with the first sequel. Instead, they did a threequel (and recently rebooted it as a family friendly film!). This may as well have been an ordinary cop film for the use it made of the Robocop name. It simply used Robocop to sell tickets, rather than reverse the damage done by the sequel. Instead, it did even more damage to the Robocop name. Kids, just watch the original. That’s all you need to do.

Honourable Mentions

Alien 3

Batman Forever

Pirates of the Carribean: World’s End

Poltergeist III

Rambo III

Superman III

X-Men III: The Last Stand

Agree or disagree? Any you’d take away or add? What is your Top 10?

Click here to see Hammy’s Top 10 Worst Sequels